Summit in Washington: Reporter's Notebook; The Man, the Mikes and the Moment

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And at 6 P.M., as he left his meeting with President Bush at the White House, Mikhail S. Gorbachev obliged.

With the aplomb of a United States Senator, the Soviet President stepped up to the bouquet of microphones stationed outside the West Wing and surprised reporters and White House officials by putting his own construction on the first two summit sessions.

He indicated that there may have been movement on the thorny issue of German unification, noting that ''something had emerged.'' Saying that he thought the Foreign Ministers for both countries should sit down and discuss the issue, he added, ''I think it is not here that the German question will be resolved.''

Only a few seconds after he swept away from the White House, Mr. Gorbachev stopped his Zil limousine and his impressive 43-car motorcade a block east of the White House to do some of his patented flesh-pressing. He seems to be motivated partly by a sense of relish for the adulation he is denied at home, and partly by the feeling that his ''spontaneous'' stops are a calculated way of generating the television pictures of happy Americans mobbing him that are meant to impress the disaffected Soviet audiences.

Perhaps with a wink at his attempts to lure economic investment to a country in a panic over bread prices, Mr. Gorbachev chose the corner where 15th Street,Pennsylvania and New York Avenues come together.''

Although many Washingtonians had predicted that the Soviet showman would trump himself with a more elaborate appearance - a stop at the Lincoln Memorial, perhaps -Mr. Gorbachev decided to stick with his old routine of a downtown street corner.

It may not have been terribly imaginative, but the rush-hour crowd of young government employees and bank workers and tourists did not seem to care. The shouts and sirens of the nervous K.G.B., F.B.I. and Secret Service agents - who were taken totally by surprise since the White House was not informed in advance - mingled with the clapping, shouting and laughing of the delighted pedestrians.

''He's getting out!'' yelled a Secret Service agent, adorning his statement with a down-home expletive.

Sandra Marinaro, who works in the trust department at American Security Bank, boasted that she had been close to the Soviet President. ''Oh, yeah,'' she told all listeners. ''I saw the birthmark on his head.''

One young man in the crowd of 200 tried to jump up and down but he could see only the top of Mr. Gorbachev's head and a flash of his confident smile. ''Take his picture, man,'' he yelled in confusion at a bystander holding a tape recorder. ''Take his picture. Get your camera up there. Take his picture. Calm down. Can't you reach over his shoulder?''

Mr. Gorbachev worked the east side of the street and then the west. ''I feel very welcome here,'' he said through his translator.

What a Character!

The Soviet leader's cool mien today, in the face of his daunting problems at home, was impressive. It provoked everyone from jaded television producers to the President of the United States into fits of character analysis.

Paul Greenberg, the executive producer of NBC special programs, mused as he watched the tape of Mr. Gorbachev having lunch with American guests at the Soviet Embassy, ''I don't think I'd be munching on chicken Kiev if I had all the problems Gorbachev has.''

Mr. Bush, chatting with reporters tonight in front of the White House, said: ''I don't feel a weakened presence or anything of that nature. I see a man determined to do his job.''

From the Cold War Attic

Glasnost comes more easily to some agencies of the United States Government than others.

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As Mr. Gorbachev arrived in the capital on Wednesday evening for the summit that is supposed to represent the transformation of the superpowers from adversaries to partners, a military press officer at the Pentagon was handing out glossy booklets titled, ''Soviet Biological Warfare Threat.'' The cover of the booklet, which was published by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1986, features two ominous-looking Soviet Army camouflage helicopters spraying deadly poison over a landscape of mountains and fir trees.

Why in the world, the press officer was asked, would the Pentagon distribute four-year-old books bashing the Soviets on the night President Bush welcomed the Soviet President to town?

''Well, gee, we were clearing out the storeroom and we were going to throw them all out,'' the officer replied with lingering cold war logic, ''so we thought we'd see if the press wanted to take them instead.''

Act II: Enter Bush, Testily

One would think that the White House would have learned by now to expect the unexpected from the Soviet leader, but they were still blindsided by Mr. Gorbachev's decision to emerge from the West Wing and give reportings an American-style briefing at the spin launching pad usually used by members of Congress and others after meetings with the President.

White House officials were so unprepared that they did not even have a staff member standing by with a tape recorder, standard operating procedure, and had to rely on the broadcast by Cable News Network like everyone else.

Concerned that Mr. Gorbachev would steal the sound bite on the German issue, frantic White House officials pushed President Bush out before microphones in the Rose Garden an hour later to give his version.

''It's good for the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet people to hear reassuring words from their leader about Germany, but it's also important for that message to come from the leader of the West, too,'' one Administration official said dryly.

In his turn, Mr. Bush told reporters that he was sympathetic to the number of lives lost by the Soviets in World War II, and that he had told Mr. Gorbachev that the United States had lost many ''kids'' in the war with Germany as well.

''I reminded him,'' President Bush said, showing with a rare spurt of asperity that he was nettled by these unscheduled dueling press availabilities, ''that I was the only one of the two of us that was old enough to remember it from being there.''

Next Time, Maybe

President Bush failed again today in his desperate attempt to loosen up the Soviet leader, who never sheds his coat and tie.

On the official summit schedule, Mr. Bush was supposed to show Mr. Gorbachev his prize horseshoe pit outside the Oval Office after the first working session. But the session went 40 minutes over, and Mr. Gorbachev begged off because he had a lunch at the Soviet Embassy.

Reporters noted Mr. Bush's failure to get Mr. Gorbachev near a sport, much less to get him playing one, with some amusement.

A version of this article appears in print on June 1, 1990, on Page A00006 of the National edition with the headline: Summit in Washington: Reporter's Notebook; The Man, the Mikes and the Moment. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe